Day of the Spiders Page 4
Christ kiddo, I hate to see you leave, but I love to watch you go, he thought to himself. He checked his pockets (keys, wallet, phone) and then he went out of the door.
It was a beautiful day outside. It was still early autumn so the temperature was a little on the cool side. He thought that by the time midday came around he would be shedding his coat. He couldn’t think of a single thing in his life that was bad, not right now. This was as good as life could ever be.
He caught himself singing along to his car radio as he drove to the station.
3.
Lilly Richmond was trying as hard as she could to get her shit together. She only had an hour before she was due to arrive at work and her daughter Lottie was playing merry hell this morning. Granted, she was only three years old, and what three-year-old child didn’t play merry hell in the mornings? The thing about Lottie was, she seemed to only start when Lilly had got up late or had some other stressor affecting her general mood. It was almost as if Lottie knew, and she decided to see just how far Mummy could be pushed before she lost her rag and began yelling.
This morning, Lottie wanted to go and play in the garden on her new climbing frame and slide. It had been her birthday a week ago and her father had bought her the damn thing as a great big surprise. Ever since the monstrosity had been built in the garden Lottie had picked the most randomly strange times to want to go and play on it. The night before last she had been awake at two in the morning wanting to go outside and play, the denial of which had resulted in a full on screaming tantrum that had lasted until three thirty. Lilly had showed up at the solicitors, where she had worked for the last six years, with dark circles under her eyes and a temper that was on very thin ice for the duration of the day. It was no picnic being a single parent, that was for damn sure. There seemed to be no rest bite from it at all, other than when Lottie was asleep or staying at her Nana’s house (which she did once a month at the insistence of Lilly’s mother. She needed to find a new mate after all, didn’t she? Those were the exact words that she had used too and it had made Lilly cringe with embarrassment.) But, Lilly was just about as stubborn as they got. She was determined to make it work for both her and Lottie.
Robert (her soon to be ex-husband) had told her that she wouldn’t be able to cope, not only without his guiding light, but with a young child and a full-time job. She had never been violent in her entire life, but she had come very close to slapping the taste right out of his mouth when he had passed such a judgement on her. Instead, she had bottled it up and used it to give her a steely determination to make him eat his own words. Yes, she would do it, and make a success of it, if nothing else, just to shove it up his arse. That would show him that, not only that he was wrong, but he would see what an awesome marriage he had thrown away on a one-night-stand that he couldn’t even blame the drink for. She took no prisoners on that one, none whatsoever. If he had been so easily led astray, then he couldn’t have thought too much about his wife or his family. He was out straight away, no messing around. He had apologised, he had pleaded, and she had almost cracked, but the image in her mind of him lying on top of his bloated, ugly ex-girlfriend Penny and pumping away was too much for her to tolerate. Every time she looked at him the same image would be there. He had chosen a fuck over his marriage, so it was done, game over, finished.
He had tried to make things difficult for her. He had tried to deny his adultery, but Lilly had proof.
Proof? What Proof? he had roared.
She had picked up her mobile phone and with a few taps of her long fingernails a message was buzzing its arrival in Robert’s pocket. He pulled out his mobile, opened the message and found a screenshot taken from his very own phone, the words that he had sent, and the words he had got back with the picture of Penny’s enormous droopy breast. He looked at the picture, a dark crimson working its way up from his collar to his cheeks. He had nothing left to say. He was done, game over, finished.
After a few weeks, when the dust had settled a little, she had sat down with him and negotiated with him. She had told him that there was no way she could ever trust him again and it was really as simple as that. He had to accept it and he had to move on, not just for the sake of his own mental health, but for the sake of keeping a relationship with his daughter. He had relented, apologised again and again, and then they had worked out a deal. He could come and spent time with Lottie whenever he wanted, and when he was set up in his own place he could have her stay overnight. That had been seven months ago and he still hadn’t got his shit together enough to get his own place to live. He did, however, show up and spend time with Lottie a few days out of the week. Lilly never doubted his ability as a Dad, and Lottie would squeal with delight every time he knocked on the door. Lilly suspected that he hadn’t worked out his own place to live just so he could spend more time in the family home. She didn’t begrudge him either.
He had arrived on her birthday dead on five o’clock with the huge box that contained that goddamn climbing frame. Lottie had been delighted. Lilly, was a little less enamoured with the whole thing. She couldn’t wait for the day when she finally got bored of it and left it alone in the garden to rot. That time couldn’t come soon enough, especially this morning.
“I wanna play ooouuuuut,” Lottie was wailing.
Lilly’s head was beginning to ache. She had misplaced a letter from her bank, telling her that she needed to get in touch to tell them why she had gone over her overdraft this month. She was going to sort it out on her dinner hour today, even though the idea of having to fawn and apologise to them filled her with utter revulsion. She had only gone overdrawn to pay for Lottie’s birthday, so she was hardly reaping the benefits of the money herself. Still, it needed to be sorted out. She liked to be organised, it reduced the stress in her life, or at least that was the theory. But the letter had apparently grown legs and had gone off to hide somewhere just to make her morning even more of a hassle that it was already.
“Muuuuuuuuuuummmmeeeeeeeeeee”
She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the anger building up in her system. She was pretty close to just flipping out and roaring at Lottie at the top of her voice to get the hell away from her. But the reasonable and logical part of her mind told her to get Lottie outside to play on the climbing frame, and then she could look for the letter and get everything else ready for the off without being hounded. It was certainly the better option. If she yelled, then Lottie wouldn’t want to go to nursery. She would cry the whole way there and then she wouldn’t go in. Then she would be late for work, a symphony of catastrophe to kick the day off. Her mood would be sullen and grouchy when she showed up at work and that would be reflected in her attitude towards the customers who, because of their own stress from being tangled up in a variety of legal haranguing would be just as short and impatient as she was. Basically, the day would be pretty much knackered before it had even begun to stretch its legs. This way, Lottie could go out and play and there would possibly be only one more mild fight to get her off the damn thing so they could get going. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a more palatable outcome.
“Go and get your coat on, it’s cold outside,” she said.
“Yaaay, fankoo mummy,” yelled Lottie and she hugged Lilly’s legs. Even with the stress of the morning, she couldn’t help but smile. Soon she was outside climbing to the top of the bulky plastic frame and bellowing to anyone that would listen that she was the king of the castle in her high-pitched baby voice.
Lilly managed to find the letter down the back of the toaster. How the hell it had got there she had no idea, but at least it had been found and she would be able to proceed with her day as planned. She needed to go and fix herself up. As much as she hated it, she needed to look the part for her job, which meant applying make-up and getting her hair in a presentable fashion. She made her way upstairs.
She knew that she would be able to keep an eye on Lottie from the bedroom window which looked out over the garden. She went into the bedroom a
nd over to the window. Lottie was still standing on the frame singing an unintelligible song. Lilly opened the window and shouted down to her to let her know that she was upstairs. Lottie waved at her and then carried on her improvised verse. Lilly stood in front of the mirror and began to put herself together. She docked her phone into her speaker and started up her playlist. She fixed her hair and then her make-up listening to the music. She began to sing along, not well but with lusty enjoyment. She felt that the day, which had started off on such a downer was beginning to pick up. She felt that she could possibly turn this one around if she didn’t have too much of a fight to get Lottie to go to nursery. She was certainly more well equipped to deal with another bout of stamping feet and sulking, perhaps with a little bribery.
She checked her reflection again. It looked pretty good.
Robert really dropped the ball here, she thought to herself with a smile. She wondered to herself if she would ever go after another man. It certainly wasn’t on the radar at the moment. She had everything she needed right here and right now.
“Lottie, time to get ready,” she called, going over to the open window. Her hand paused on the handle as she prepared to pull it closed and her second shout for Lottie stopped in her throat. She wasn’t on the frame anymore. Lilly poked her head out of the window and looked down to try and see if she was in the garden anywhere. There was no sign of her. A little spring of fear began to well in her insides. She tried to put it to bed by telling herself that she must have come inside the house to either get herself a snack or to get herself ready for the off. Lilly pulled the window closed and hurried downstairs calling Lottie’s name, but there was no reply. The fear began to grow in her. Lottie sometimes decided to play an impromptu game of hide-and-seek every now and again. Lilly hated it when she did it, and she was so good at it too. She had spent a fair few minutes looking for her in the supermarket a few weeks ago, only to find her standing right behind her. Lottie had managed to stay out of her eyeline just long enough for her to get a serious amount of panic going through her system. When she had seen her standing behind her, a cheeky little grin spread out over her face, she had yelled at her right in front of all the other shoppers who stopped to watch the spectacle. Lottie had cried, the fun of hiding from Mummy crumpling from her face and Lilly had immediately felt bad. They had hot chocolate and a cake when they had got home and she had explained to Lottie as best she could that what she had done had scared Mummy and that she shouldn’t do it again. They had spent the rest of the evening watching Disney films and eating far too much junk food. All-in-all that day had ended on a high and a valuable lesson had been learned.
Right now, she was bubbling with a combination of anger and fear. If she was hiding from her then she was going to tell her off again which was going to end in tears, if she wasn’t…….
She tore the back door open and shouted her name. Her voice was getting higher and more panicky each time she yelled.
“Please don’t hide from Mummy,” she called out into the garden.
Nothing.
She stepped out of the door and went over to where the climbing frame was stood. She looked all around it to see if there was any sign of her.
Nothing.
She was in full panic mode now. Her heart was crashing in her chest and a huge glut of emotion was rising in her throat. Where could she be? Where could she have gone? Where?.......
“Muuuummmeeeeeeeeeeee”
Lilly craned her head around the back of the climbing frame. Lottie was on the floor, her legs splayed out on the grass and the rest of her half propped up on the back of the climbing frame. She yelled out again, her voice strangled and gargling. Her cheeks were burning red and her eyes twitched and rolled unnaturally in their sockets. A steady stream of foam was running out of her mouth.
“Oh dear God,” yelled Lilly. What had happened to her? Had she fallen? Had she broken something? She bent down to Lottie, holding her face in her hands. “What’s happened baby? Tell Mummy what happened.”
Lottie’s eyes met her for a moment. There was a fleeting recognition and then they rolled over white. Lottie began to convulse, her arms and legs drumming the grassy floor and her head thrashing from one side to the other.
“Jesus,” whimpered Lilly. She scooped up her baby, tears spilling down her face. She took her inside, laid her on the sofa and grabbed the house phone so she could phone an ambulance.
By the time the flashing lights appeared outside Lilly Richmond’s house on Corsica Road, she was standing out the front, holding her daughter’s lifeless body in her arms. She was screaming for somebody to help her, please would somebody help her.
But Lottie Richmond was already dead.
4.
Three doors down from where Lilly Richmond lived was the home of Boris Nelson. Every single one of the houses on Corsica Road were almost identical, as most terraced houses in the west side of Layton were. The layouts inside mirrored each other almost perfectly. If you felt at home in one of the houses on Corsica Road then there was a pretty good chance that you would feel at home inside any of the houses on the street, they were so similar. The layout of Boris’s house was just the same, however you would be hard pushed to feel at home inside it unless of course you were Boris Nelson. He wasn’t high on decorating, or maintenance, or even general tidiness. His living room was awash with old newspapers, empty beer cans and ashtrays that were full to the brim of old dog-ends. The kitchen wasn’t much better. He hadn’t washed a single plate or dish in months and months. Nor had he cleaned any of his clothes for twice as long. His washing machine had died in a spectacularly underwhelming way. It had clicked the door lock on, filled itself, refused to rotate and had pissed its supply of soapy, lavender smelling water onto the floor. After that, it had failed to respond. It was stone dead. The clothes that had been put into it when it had decided to commit suicide were still in there. But now they had turned into a furry-green collection of mould that obscured the glass window. The smell in the house overall was pretty overpowering to anyone that would be brave enough to go inside. But, nobody other than Boris had set foot in the place for over three years.
That was just the way that Boris liked it. He didn’t want to engage with anyone in conversation. He didn’t want to have to put up with boring, meaningless chit-chat or anything else that would waste his valuable time. Boris’s pre-occupation for now and for the foreseeable future was to wallow, no, to actually drown in his own pathetic self-pity. Boris had got on the proverbial bus to self-pity land when his wife of just over six years had been killed as she lay in the accident and emergency department of Wythenshaw hospital on the day that it was invaded by the Newtown Spiders.
She had been coming down the stairs and using her mobile phone as she descended. He had told her about it on many occasions. He said that she would hurt herself, and guess what? She had missed her footing right on the last step. There had been a noise that sounded a large stick being snapped inside a wet towel, and wouldn’t you know it, she was sat on the floor with her left foot turned all the way around. There had been a ride in an ambulance for her and he told her that he would follow in the car and bring some of her stuff. There was no way that she was going to be out of there in just a few hours, not with an injury like that, so he had stayed back and packed her a few days’ worth of clothing and her current battered paperback into a small bag. He was just about to go out of the front door to drive to the hospital and he saw that he had left the television on. He went to turn it off and his hand was stayed by the breaking news report that was playing on the screen. There had been a suspected terrorist attack inside Wythenshaw hospital. He sat down slowly on the edge of his armchair, unable to process that the building that was being shown on the screen was the same place that Joanne had been carted off to just an hour earlier. There was a reported rambling on about the situation and that they had very little information to go on blah, blah, blah. Boris had watched it for around five minutes and then he decided that he was
going to go down there anyway. His hand was reaching for the remote control when there was suddenly a loud crash from the television. Some of the windows on the upper floors had burst through and there was something oozing through the broken panes. At first, Boris thought that it was some kind of sludge running down the sides of the building, but then one of the cameras zoomed in and he saw that it wasn’t sludge, it was hundreds of very ugly looking spiders slipping and crawling down the walls. He had never seen anything like it before in his life. It looked like he was watching a cheap-ass b-movie from the mid-eighties. The river of spiders quickly became a torrent and then he saw something that made him clap his hand over his mouth. There were dead bodies being dragged out of the windows. One of them had his chest torn open, a deep cavity of red and splintered ribs in the place of his heart and his lungs. The picture on the screen suddenly cut off. He headed for the hospital anyway but was stopped in his tracks by a roadblock that was preventing anyone getting anywhere near the area.
None of it mattered anyway. There was nothing he could do about it. They had a mock funeral for her, not that they could find a body, only shredded pieces of the woman that he loved. The casket had been a full sized one, and when he had carried it with three pall bearers he had felt how light it was and that only added to the sense that none of this was really happening. She wasn’t really dead, was she?
After the dust had settled, he had taken to staying at home, not bothering with going to work anymore, happy to put in a claim for sickness benefits, happy to send away anyone who wanted to interfere with his life, until they just stopped bothering. He knew what he was doing. He was going to stay at home and wait for Joanne to come back. One day she would breeze through the door and shout his name. Then they could get on with their lives and forget that any of this spider business had ever happened.